Jersey Evening Post's new-look website to go behind metered paywall

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The Jersey Evening Post has announced plans to put its website behind a metered paywall.

The title relaunched its website yesterday, notifying readers that a paywall to access "premium" content will kick in at the beginning of March.

Premium content includes the stories found in the print edition with added video, picture and archive content, as well as “extra facts, figures, comment and analysis”.

Each month readers will be able to access ten articles for free but will have to pay £4.99 for continued access. Subscribers can buy their first month for 99p.

Editor Andy Sibcy said the system is part of an new approach to the online service.

He said: “The site’s really been about promoting and teasing what’s in the paper that day.”

Content will now be uploaded to the site as soon as it is ready and offer a product which Sibcy believes will “to some extent” protect paper sales.

The editor said: “We felt that so much of our content had a huge amount of value that it made no sense to give it away.”

He added: “I think if I look around the internet and around the world we are leading the way among regional papers in preparing for the future and it’s clear the readers do want their news delivered to them digitally.”

The Jersey Evening Post, which recorded an average circulation of 15,607 in the first half of 2014, is also donating its photographic archive to the island to mark the newspaper’s 125th anniversary.

The archive will be conserved and digitised by Jersey Heritage and includes glass plates, negatives and prints since the paper was founded in 1890.

Sibcy said: “We wanted to do something that really paints our position as an institution that has been at the heart of Jersey life for some time.

“You can get lost in it – it’s such an interesting and rich source of history.”